One of the first things Bob Geldof said on Archive on 4: Meeting Myself Coming Back (Radio 4, Saturday) was that he hates listening to himself. Yet that is the structuring device of these lengthy profiles; a "life in sound" as presenter John Wilson put it.

It's a fine idea, and one that worked with Geldof to produce a surprising and candid interview. He was as colossally sure of himself as you'd expect, saying a few times, "I agree precisely with my younger self", as he listened to clips. Wilson noted at one point that Geldof was "nodding along", too. But he was also left reeling from emotion on hearing some archive material, especially a recording of him speaking after a trip to Ethiopia. "It was unspeakable," he said. You could hear his voice faltering, but Wilson added: "I'm seeing somebody so visibly moved by the memory of that visceral experience."

He also spoke of how grief overwhelmed him when Paula Yates left him. "I just floated," he recalled. "The pain was beyond immensity. The grief was universes of grief." At his lowest point, he made lists of reasons to keep going and not to, and the only thing on the keep going page was his children. Wilson asked if he really had contemplated suicide. "That morning, yeah," Geldof replied.